


Build A New Foundation

by strix_alba



Series: after the (radioactive) dust settles [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Coming Out, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Families of Choice, M/M, Multi, Post-Season/Series 02, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-14 00:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12995853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: Eleven catches his eye while they’re both watching Mike. She gives him a small, secret smile, and Will is momentarily terrified that she’s read his mind andknows— until she Force-pokes him from across the table, and looks pleased with herself when he jumps.Sometimes, Will wishes that Mike had fallen for someone easier to be jealous of.





	Build A New Foundation

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to [Aria](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aria) for the stellar editing and revisions and help with D&D references!
> 
> Dedicated to [feedingonwind](http://archiveofourown.org/users/feedingonwind) because they wanted this ship and deserve nice things. Otherwise, I would have given up on figuring out how to write a happy fic, and just left it at the first scene.
> 
> This is linked to the previous fic in that they're part of the same continuity, but they're not necessary to read together.

Will had held out hope that maybe there would be some sort of early Christmas miracle. He had stupid daydreams about going to the dance, and hanging out with his friends, and then a slow song would come on. Lucas and Max would dance, obviously, and then he and Mike would be left sitting at a table by themselves (Dustin was … sick, or hanging out with some other nonexistent friends, and Will feels really guilty about it but he needs to be alone with Mike and he can’t do that if Dustin is there and anyway, it’s _his_ daydream). They’d watch the dance, and then Will would glance sideways at Mike, and find him looking back, and Mike would say, “This is dumb. You want to dance?” like it was no big deal.

In an ideal world, Will is calm, not nervous at all, stands up and holds out his hand and says, “Yeah, sure.” But he knows himself well enough that he can’t even daydream about that successfully. He stammers and can’t look Mike in the eye and says, “Like, together?”

“Yeah, together,” says daydream-Mike. “Who cares? We’re freaks anyway.” And then they get up and dance — real dancing like his mom showed him, not just standing and swaying — Mike’s hands in his, spinning him …

Anyway, that’s not what happens at all. Dustin is there, but he goes off in pursuit of a dance partner, and Will’s heart beats hard when they’re alone, at the thought that maybe, maybe …

And then Katie asks him to dance. “Zombie Boy,” she calls him. A shiver of distaste runs through him: he’s interesting enough to dance with, but only because of what happened to him, not because he’s Will Byers. He can’t speak — you don’t outright say no to a girl, it’s not chivalrous, and Will’s been rejected enough times that he knows how much it hurts. He doesn’t want to do that. But he can’t, he can’t — he looks at Mike, hoping against hope that he will step in. _“Sorry, he’s not interested. Come on, Will,”_ he imagines for a split second.

“Sure, he’d love to,” Mike says. He gives Will a smile and an encouraging push forward. Will’s heart plummets into his stomach. He stumbles after Katie and puts his hands on her waist and sways because it’s what he’s supposed to do. Will’s read a hundred hero quests and fantasy novels and the hero may not always have a grand romance but when he does, he gets the girl whether he wants her or not.

Katie is a little taller than him and his eyes are level with her chin. Her hands are smaller and finer than any of his friends (except for Max, who is his friend now, he’s pretty sure) and she keeps trying to make eye contact. He looks around desperately for his friends as the song goes on, and on, and on …

First he sees Lucas and Max, giggling with their arms around each other. It makes Will happy and it makes something in his chest hollow and hurt, in a mundane way that doesn’t feel like the hollowing-out of the Upside Down. He catches sight of Nancy after that because she’s taller than anyone else, and when he sees Dustin beaming up at her, he actually looks at Katie and smiles. She smiles shyly back at him, too fluttering and girlish for comfort.

“Can I tell you something?” she asks.

“Uh … sure,” he says, mouth dry.

She leans closer. “I actually hate slow dancing. I wish we could waltz without looking silly.”

Will looks over her shoulder. His throat is tight, and his eyes are hot. What’s wrong with him? He is dancing with a girl who hasn’t ever been mean to him (even if they never really spoke before he went away) and she would probably love it if he told her that he sort of knows how to waltz now. She’s trying to be friendly, and Will just wants to run away and maybe hold Mike’s hand.

And speaking of Mike …

They slowly sway in a circle, and Will sees Mike and Eleven a few yards away (and when did she arrive?) He watches as they lift their faces to each other. Part of him is shrieking silently in the back of his mind. Amazingly, he’s pretty sure that he’s still normal on the outside. Katie doesn’t seem to notice anything. They move a bit, and he misses the exact moment when his best friend kisses the girl he’s been mourning for a year. It’s probably for the best, because Will feels sick anyway. 

What did he expect? He knew — Lucas had told him, equally grossed out and impressed, about Mike and Eleven, but it was one thing to hear about it from someone who also wasn’t thrilled. It was another for Mike to kiss Eleven right in front of Will, and to know that Lucas probably thought this was perfectly normal, now that he had also met a girl he would like to kiss.

After an eternity of crooning music over the speakers, the song changes. Will steps back, and Katie’s hands drop from his shoulders, leaving them slightly chilly. “Do you want to go get something to drink? I’m thirsty,” she says.

Will shakes his head. “No, I’m — thanks, I’m gonna go find my friends.” The words tumble out over each other in a rush. He smiles at her and he doesn’t focus on her face or wait for a response before he flees.

He manages to avoid his friends, and makes a beeline for Jonathan. His brother has been taking photos of the dance for the yearbook when he’s not photographing groups of friends in the photo booth area. He lowers his camera when he sees Will.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he says. He looks so _happy_. Will wonders if he saw him dancing with Katie. Will wonders if Jonathan is secretly relieved that he, too, is normal.

“El — Jane’s here,” says Will.

“Yeah, I saw!”

“Will!”

Jonathan’s eyes move past him. Will turns, and there they are: Mike and Eleven, giddy and holding hands, deepening the hollow nauseated part of Will. It was Eleven who called his name. Her face lights up when she sees him, and she hugs him around the shoulders tightly. She always remembers not to touch the still-healing burn on his stomach, even when his friends and family forget sometimes. Will hugs her back.

“You were dancing,” she says.

Will gives her the best version of a confident smile that he can muster. After all, it’s not her fault he’s broken. It’s not her fault he wants to be the one Mike looks at like he’s so full of emotion that he’s going to cry from it. “Not really. It’s mostly just standing there and looking at each other.”

Eleven nods. “It’s different. At home, we dance more … more. Like this.” She waves her arms around and bounces from foot to foot.

Will laughs, picturing Chief Hopper flapping his arms the same way. Mike laughs too, and Eleven looks delighted with herself.

Jonathan’s camera goes off.

“Pictures?” Eleven asks.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. This one is my camera, not the school’s.” Jonathan hefts the smaller one in his hand. “No one’s gonna see that one but us.” 

Eleven looks from Jonathan to Will to Mike. Her face is hard to read, but Will might say her expression is thoughtful. “Mike. Picture,” she says.

“What? No,” says Mike, eyes wide.

“Yes. Will, picture. To remember being all the way happy,” Eleven says. She takes Will’s hand and drags him and Mike around the table, over to the balloon arch. Mike looks at Will helplessly, but Will can see that he isn’t going to argue, not with Eleven.

Jonathan takes a few photos, arranging them around each other like he’s taking serious portraits in their living room instead of souvenir pictures in the gymnasium: Eleven with her arms around Will and Mike; Will sitting, Eleven with her chin on his head, and Mike leaning over her; and Mike in the middle, holding Will’s right hand and Eleven’s left, their fists all raised above their heads.

Will is really, really glad that Eleven is all the way happy. He himself is about halfway there.

~~*~~*~~

At school on Monday, Katie comes up to Will at his locker with two of her friends in tow. “Hi, Zombie Boy,” she says.

“Hi … Waltzing Girl,” he says back. It’s a beat too late to be really cutting. Maybe she thinks of it as a term of endearment, like Will the Wise.

Her friend on the left giggles. Katie holds out a piece of looseleaf paper at him. It has a phone number written in light blue ink. Will takes it, dazed.

“You should call me. We can go to the arcade together,” says Katie. She sounds like someone who has practiced her lines. Will empathizes. He’s sat in his room or in the school bathroom, practicing sentences over and over if he needs to say something important in public.

“Um. Thanks,” he says.

She waits for a moment, but he doesn’t have anything else he can think of to say. “Okay, well. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah. See you.”

Will grips the paper with both hands and turns away. He’s shaking, just a little. Katie and her friends are leaving; he doesn’t think they can see it.

He reaches for his locker door and jumps when Dustin leans against the locker next to his with a shit-eating grin on his face. “How is the lady Katherine Hooper today?” he asks.

“Shut up,” says Will, flushing.

“Mike says you danced with her on Friday.” Dustin wiggles his fingers meaningfully.

Will snorts. “Yeah, ‘cause he made me.” He shoves Katie’s phone number into his backpack and slams the door to his locker. “Where is he, anyway?”

“At AV Club with Lucas and Max. Who are officially dating, by the way.”

“I’m sorry,” says Will, because even if he doesn’t get the fuss, he knows that Dustin had a crush on her the moment he saw her.

“Nah, it’s cool. Lucas and Max, Mike and Eleven, you and Katie, me and Nancy …” Dustin looks smug.

Will shoulder-checks him as they walk down the hall. “Nancy’s definitely not into you.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

“Well for one, you’re way too young for her.” Will smiles a little in anticipation, now that the heat is off him for a moment. “Two, she’s dating _my brother._ ”

“Man. I was hoping you’d buy it for at least three seconds.”

“Not a chance,” says Will, and laughs.

~~*~~*~~

They’ve moved D&D nights back to Mike’s basement now that Will is allowed out of his mom’s sight for more than a school day at a time. Eleven technically still doesn’t exist, but as Mike and Nancy both pointed out, their parents didn’t notice her _living in the basement_ for a week last year … and they didn’t notice two of their children disappearing for a few days, either. It’s pretty simple to have Jonathan drive Will and El over at the same time, and then to sneak in the back door. It’s kind of fun, even.

Will created a new character for Eleven to play — the Threshold Guardian, a powerful mage — but unlike Max, she’s more interested in watching and exploring than playing the game. Her character gets taken, to everyone’s surprise, by Steve freaking Harrington, at the times when he stops by to play with them. 

(“We can make her a man,” Will had offered, the first night that Dustin brought him downstairs. 

Steve had shrugged. “I’m playing Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of middle schoolers. I have no dignity left to lose.”)

Tonight, Mike takes them on a dungeon crawl. El quits levitating the game pieces to watch him narrate. She looks at him with a happy, comfortable expression, and Will envies her the freedom to leave it written on her face. She catches his eye while they’re both watching Mike. She gives him a small, secret smile, and Will is momentarily terrified that she’s read his mind and _knows_ — until she Force-pokes him from across the table, and looks pleased with herself when he jumps.

Sometimes, Will wishes that Mike had fallen for someone easier to be jealous of.

Will leaves at the end of the night through the front door, and then meets up with El around the side of the house. Jonathan is waiting outside, and they pile into the car, laughing and shushing each other. Jonathan will drive her back to Hopper’s cabin after this, but first, a stop at Will’s house to get her photographs.

They sit on the living room couch and squish together next to Jonathan as he lays out his most recently developed photos on the coffee table. There are the first few that he and Mike and El took as a trio; and then more, after the rest of their friends joined them. El seizes them one after the other and stares at them like she’s scouring them for clues. She holds one out for Will to see: him on Mike’s back, arms wrapped around his shoulders and a second away from falling onto Lucas, just out of the frame.

“Pretty,” says Eleven, pointing to his picture and smiling.

Will’s stomach does a little flip.

“Usually we call girls pretty. Boys are handsome,” Jonathan says gently.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind,” says Will. He stares at the photograph. He barely notices when El lets go, and collects the rest. He remembers Mike bending down so he could lift Will without hurting the burn on his side. He’d been hyper-aware of every inch of his own body, his expressions — he’d been careful just to look like a normal boy goofing around with his friends. Will is grudgingly impressed by himself and how carefree he looks.

He puts the picture back on the table.

“Thank you. I like them,” El says to Jonathan. She smiles at him. “The pictures and my friends.”

Jonathan pats her shoulder. Will realizes that she’s making a joke, and laughs.

Jonathan and Eleven leave to drive back to her cabin. By accident or on purpose, El leaves the picture of Will and Mike behind, on the table. Will snatches it up, puts it in his desk drawer, and then shuts the drawer firmly so that it is out of sight. He gets out his pencils. He draws, and nothing comes out right. He draws, and the pencil angle is wrong, and he gouges the paper, and the only things his hand wants to draw are vines, tunnels, tentacles. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Jonathan comes back inside, and Will jumps up before he can shut himself in his bedroom. He runs down the hallway and throws his arms around his brother. Jonathan stops moving and hugs him back, swaying a little from the change in momentum. “Hey, hey. Everything all right?” he asks.

“No.” Jonathan tenses. “Nothing — everything’s right-side up, I promise. Just,” — Will lets go. He marches into Jonathan's bedroom and sits down on the edge of the bed. Jonathan shuts the door behind him. He sits next to Will, close enough for his body heat to radiate down Will’s side. It’s comforting, familiar.

They sit in silence. Jonathan drums his fingers on his knees. Will wishes he had something to do with his hands. He shuts his eyes. “It’s okay to be a freak, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course. All kinds of freaks,” Jonathan tells him.

Will nods. “Okay. Even …” He’s going to cry, and he does not want to cry. He won’t. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t like girls the way my friends do. I don’t care. I didn’t want to dance at the Snow Ball, and I hate that you and Lucas and — and Mike all have girlfriends all of a sudden.” He opens his eyes and glares at the floor.

“Are you … I mean, I didn’t care about girls, and dating, until … tenth grade, I think,” says Jonathan carefully. “It’s like a switch flips in your brain all of a sudden. A stupid, kind of creepy switch.”

Will laughs. It’s not _that_ funny. He laughs too hard anyway. “Gross. No. I care about — dating, I guess. It’s.” He swallows. “I like … boys. Everyone was right about me.” _Queer. Gay. Faggot._ “I hate that they can tell.”

“Oh.” Jonathan looks at him thoughtfully. Will bites his lip. “That’s … yeah, okay.” He hugs Will around the shoulders, dragging him sideways and halfway into his lap in a hug. His chin digs into the top of Will’s head, and his voice reverberates through Will’s chest when he speaks. “Those people are just dicks. They can’t ‘tell’ anything. They’re just scared ‘cause you’re different, and people hate different.”

“But it’s okay with you, right? That I’m …” Will doesn’t want to actually say it aloud.

“You’re my best friend. I love you. You just gotta promise me something.”

Will wriggles free, side twinging, so that he can look Jonathan in the eye. “What?”

“Promise me you’ll tell me as soon as you get a boyfriend.” Jonathan ducks his head to meet Will’s eyes. His expression is serious except for one tiny tilted-up corner of his mouth.

“In Hawkins? Yeah, right,” says Will. He tries not to think about Mike holding his hand when they were both scared and lonely. It doesn’t mean the same thing as what he wants. 

“Promise,” Jonathan insists with a smile, like it’s natural, like it’s normal. Like he expects Will to be a queer and still get his chance at happiness. His confidence loosens something in Will, an icy knot that’s been building quietly in the months since he first realized that the way he looked at people was different from everyone else.

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Will smiles at his brother helplessly. For a moment, his fear dissipates, and he feels like he’s floating. “I promise.”

~~*~~*~~

Max and El have started disappearing at the same time once or twice a week. It’s confusing and mysterious and Will feels oddly left out. He mentions this to Lucas, who just flips a page in his comic book.

“What are you jealous of? They’re probably just doing girl stuff.”

“Max?” Will asks skeptically.

“I don’t know. It’s none of my business. I don’t want her to think I’m a real stalker.”

Will frowns, about to explain the difference between asking and watching someone with binoculars, when Lucas lights up. “Hey! You think we can finish our spring campaign while they’re doing whatever?”

Will had half-forgotten about the campaign that the Mind Flayer interrupted. Partially, he’s been distracted; partially, he’s avoided thinking about it, because he remembers parts of the campaign like they happened in real life, everything saturated in the glowing blues and reds of the Upside Down. But that’s gone now. He can put it behind him. He reaches for the radio on Lucas’ night stand. “Will and Lucas to Dustin and Mike. Do you copy?” he says into it, as Lucas puts down his comic book.

When they get together, Will is a little surprised by how small their old group feels. It’s only been a month and a half, and there’s still a lot of fallout going on around town. But Will is already used to hearing more voices around the table in the basement. He’s used to Max ‘accidentally’ flinging the dice when she rolls them, and he’s used to Steve and El arguing over what their mage should do, and Mike and Lucas and Dustin talking over each other to explain different options to the pair.

Right now, it’s just the four of them and their map and their quest to rescue the Kingdom of Yog from the Creeping Darkness. They’re shouting at each other about the plot, as usual, and Mike’s dad has already yelled at them to keep it down. It still manages to feel close and nostalgic, like the old days before things happened.

Will knows himself a little better now, and is even closer to his friends than they had been a year ago. He thinks that if he told them about what kind of different he is, here in the safety of the basement and the world they’ve created together, they wouldn’t shun him completely.

On the other hand, he’s just started to feel this comfortable around them again. They’ve only recently stopped treating him like he’s fragile. He doesn’t want them to tiptoe around him again, not for anything. This is a smaller secret, and he’s willing to keep it until he figures out how to share it properly.

~~*~~*~~

Because Lucas won’t, Will asks Eleven what she and Max do when they’re together. His mom and Hopper are in the kitchen, heating up and cooking different plates of food that will probably taste okay. Jonathan is in his room. There’s no one eavesdropping, just in case it’s something they shouldn’t be doing.

Eleven presses a finger to her lips. “Zooming,” she says quietly.

Will is going to tease Lucas so much for thinking they were doing ‘girly stuff’. “What kind of zooming?” he asks, remembering Dustin’s awe over Max driving them out to the tunnels.

“Skateboard,” she says. “It’s a surprise.”

“For who?” Will asks.

Eleven grins. “School.”

“I thought you had to lay low. Hopper said next school year.”

“Max says, practice. So I can get really good.”

Will pictures Eleven skating into the parking lot at school, hair slicked back and eyes ringed with raccoon eyeliner. He laughs. “Can I see?”

Eleven’s eyes light up. “ _Yes._ ”

~~*~~*~~

When Lucas opens the front door on the week before Christmas, Will isn’t quite expecting the amount of noise he hears inside the house as soon as Lucas says hello.

“Oh my god Lucas, is it your _girlfriend_? Are you gonna _kiss_?” Erica shrieks, somewhere at least a room away.

Lucas leans back inside. “It’s just Will! Stop being such a weirdo,” he shouts at her. He turns back at Will and rolls his eyes. There are footsteps behind him.

“Hi, Erica,” Will says to the face that appears under Lucas’s arm.

She looks him up and down and makes a face. “You’re boring,” she decides, and disappears.

Will and Lucas look at each other for a moment. Lucas has the expression of someone who has suffered great hardships, except that he has never looked like that when he was actually having a hard time. Then the moment is over, and Lucas shakes himself.

“So what are you doing, besides driving Erica crazy?” Lucas asks.

“I need help,” says Will.

Lucas immediately lets go of the door frame and makes room for him to come inside, shoulders dropping. “Yeah man, what’s up?”

Will follows him up the stairs. “Promise me you won’t … freak out,” he says.

Lucas waits until they’re safely in his room, door shut and locked behind them, before he responds. “Did you reopen the Gate?” he asks.

An icy spike of fear shoots through Will’s chest. “No! No.”

“Okay, good. And did you kill anyone?” Lucas asks. He paces between the closet and the door, hands behind his back.

“No.” 

“Steal something worth a lot of money?”

“No,” Will repeats, now more puzzled than anything else.

“Dammit. That would’ve been pretty cool. Okay, I think we’ve got all the ‘things I’d wig out about’ covered. Shoot.” He stops pacing and rounds on Will, rubbing his hands together, ready to plan.

It’s as encouraging as it’s going to get. Will still can’t quite look him in the eye. He’s prepared himself: he practiced this in the mirror so he only looks about as dumb talking as he usually does. “Okay. So, I was thinking about how you and Dustin got all crazy about Max. And Mike is like in love with Eleven. And I’m … not.”

Lucas raises his eyebrows. “Okay … what about it?”

“I don’t … like girls. Not like you do. I think I like guys.” Will stammers out the last part. He can feel his face and ears getting hot. He sits down on the bed.

He can feel Lucas watching him, but he doesn’t say anything. All of a sudden, the tiny thoughts in the back of his head, the _at least the Upside Down wasn’t your fault_ and _ugh, we had sleepovers with you, gross_ , seem a lot more plausible.

Then the bed bounces as Lucas sits down next to him, feet swinging. “Shit. That sucks, man.”

Of all the scenarios that Will played out in his head, this didn’t quite occur to him. For a moment, all he can do is wonder what the feeling in his stomach is, because it’s not fear and it’s not shame. “It’s not so bad,” he says instinctively, and only then does he recognize his own defensiveness.

“I mean, it’s not ‘infected by an evil being from beyond our dimension’ bad, but it’s not exactly normal,” Lucas explains.

At least he’s still sitting next to Will, not leaping across the room with disgust. “I know. But we’re not normal anyway. None of us.”

“You can say that again. Still. I’m sorry you’re … you know. It, uh.” Lucas ducks his head. “It kind of sucks when you’re different, and it’s a bad kind of different.” He pauses. “Not that you’re bad, that’s not what I mean …”

Will looks at Lucas, really looks at him, like rubbing his eyes after waking up and suddenly being able to see clearly. Lucas has been his friend long enough that Will first thinks of him as their party’s knight; it now occurs to him that a lot of people probably see him first as just the black kid. He hesitates, and then puts his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “Thanks. I get it,” he says.

Lucas gives him a toothy smile. For an instant, Will vividly remembers having a crush on him back in second grade because of that smile, before he understood what it meant to like someone. “You’re all right,” says Lucas. “So what do you need my help with? ‘Cause I gotta be honest, you’re cool, but I’m really not into you, not like that.”

Will steels himself. “It’s not that. I don’t want to tell Mike yet … or Dustin,” he adds — too late, because Lucas’s eyes widen. 

“Oh, _shit_ ,” he says. “Mike?”

“Shut up,” Will mumbles.

“Holy shit, I didn’t think — it all makes so much sense. I thought you were into Eleven. You know, ‘cause she saved your life and all. Damn.” Lucas nods to himself. 

Will giggles. “You were close.” It feels daring, dizzying, to talk about it aloud — to talk about Mike out loud. His nerves jangle like he’s giving a class presentation, all eyes on him. “I think I want to tell the rest of the party eventually. Once I … once I don’t …” He trails off.

“When it’s ‘hey guys, I’m gay’, instead of ‘guess what, I have a crush on you’,” Lucas finishes for him.

“Yeah.” Will shakes out his arms in the hope that it will stop them from twitching so much. Lucas fidgets with the bedspread. The wood beneath them thuds as they both kick their feet against it, almost in sync. 

Lucas clears his throat. “If you let me know when you’re gonna go for it, I’ll have your back,” he says.

Will finally has the stomach to turn his head and meet his eyes. “You mean it?”

“Yeah. Party members stick together, right? And friends don’t lie.” Lucas puts an arm around his shoulder and gives him a shake. Will glows inside at the touch, at the reassurance that no matter what comes of this, he’ll still have at least one friend who treats him the same as ever. 

~~*~~*~~

Will comes home from Dustin’s house and Mike is in his living room with Eleven, reading aloud from a novel or a textbook together. Will dumps his backpack on the floor and grabs a couple of cookies from the kitchen and joins them on the couch to do his homework.

(Eleven and Hopper have been spending more time at Will’s house, as the weather gets colder and it gets dark earlier. Will isn’t sure how he feels about it; but Hopper never stays the night, so he’ll take it at face value for now.)

An hour later, Nancy and Jonathan show up, hand in hand. Nancy sets up at the kitchen table; Eleven reluctantly closes the book and follows her over for her geography lesson. Mike stretches his legs out on the couch and takes out his own homework. He glances up frequently at the kitchen, and prods Will with his foot when he wants help with his history reading.

~~*~~*~~

The doorbell rings for the first of several times on December twenty-third at ten in the morning, before Will is even dressed. He dashes into his room as his mom opens the door. By the time he emerges, he can hear his mom and Hopper in the kitchen; and El is in the living room, inspecting the Christmas tree like she’s never seen it before, even though it’s been up for almost two weeks already. Will tries to make the lights flicker for her. Nothing happens, but maybe she senses it anyway, because she turns around and smiles at him.

She and Hopper are the only other people for a few hours, so it’s almost like having no guests at all. The house is warm, there’s strings of plastic garlands around the living room, and there are a good number of people that Will likes in the house. Will’s mom puts on the same Andrews Sisters Christmas record that they’ve listened to for as long as Will can remember. Usually, she makes Jonathan and Will dance; this year, she takes El’s hands, showing her how to dance the way she had taught Will. He feels a strange secondhand embarrassment on El’s behalf, until she mugs for Jonathan’s camera, and Will sees how happy she is.

Hopper cuts in, twirling Eleven neatly away, and then he and Will’s mom dance around the living room, stepping on each other’s feet and laughing. El watches them with a wistful expression. Jonathan kicks Will’s foot and looks at him meaningfully. Will shakes his head hard. 

Jonathan rolls his eyes. He hands Will the video camera, points to the light that means it’s on, and holds out his hands for Eleven; so then Will has to watch, and circle around to get better angles, and not laugh.

After lunch, they switch from the Andrews Sisters to Bing Crosby, as is traditional, and Will and Eleven take over the kitchen armed with a recipe for gingerbread cookies. Jonathan sits at the kitchen table, book in hand, to supervise, which is a little unfair in Will’s opinion: they’re thirteen, neither of them are going to burn the house down.

“Stop eating the dough! There won’t be enough cookies,” Hopper yells from the living room.

“It’s Christmas!” Eleven yells back.

“That is not going to be your excuse for everything!” he responds.

Once the cookies are safely out of the oven and cooling, Jonathan takes off to go pick up Mike and Nancy. Five minutes later, the doorbell rings. This time, it’s El who runs to hide in Will’s room, while Will hovers in the hallway.

When his mom opens the door this time, it’s to an uneven chorus of “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Byers!” as Dustin, Steve, Lucas, and Max all pile in from the cold outside. Will and Eleven look at each other and race around the corner. Will skids in his socks on the carpet and plows directly into Steve, whose jacket is _freezing_ , before he can stop.

Steve takes a half-step backwards, and ruffles his hair. Will ducks away. “Hey, kid. How’s your head doing?”

“All right. How’s yours?”

“Amazing. Docs think maybe someday I’ll stop having migraines every week or two.” Steve makes a face. “Or not. Where’s your brother?” He hefts a gift box in one hand, like he’s tossing a baseball.

“Stop doing that, you’re going to break something!” Dustin says. He grabs Steve’s arm to keep him from tossing the box again.

“Were we supposed to bring presents?” Max asks, looking around.

“No! No, we’re just here to, to celebrate,” says Will’s mom. She takes Max’s coat and hangs it up on top of the others. “Steve, you can put that under the tree. Jonathan will be back soon.” Steve crosses the living room like he’s daring anyone to comment on him bringing gifts. Meanwhile, Will hugs his friends, and they talk until his mom prods him to offer them juice or hot chocolate.

“I will,” Eleven volunteers. “I know where to go.” 

Will widens his eyes at his mom and nods: _See, El’s got it covered. I don’t need to do anything._

His mom snorts. “Go help her,” she orders him.

Jonathan and Nancy and Mike arrive as the sun is setting, and then it starts to feel like — well, like a party. Like _their_ party. Nancy comes bearing a serving tray full of cheese and crackers and pepperoni slices, neatly arranged. (“Mom,” Mike explains with a sigh.) Mike comes with a large, colorful bag that he dumps under the tree as soon as he can. He hugs Will tight; it makes Will’s heart leap, and he has to step back because it’s nearly Christmas, it’s time to be happy about his family and his friends, and not happy-sad-excited about his crush.

They all stand around talking, a little awkwardly, until the record spins itself out, and then Will’s mom corrals them into sitting down for presents.

“But you just said!” Max protests.

“I didn’t bring anything either,” Dustin reassures her. 

Steve lists over to mutter into her ear. “It’s all to make me feel better for being the only dumbass who brought stuff.”

It’s not really just Steve — Will has spent the last few weeks drawing something for everyone, which was … easier for some than others. And he and the other original party members pooled their resources to buy and wrap two more radios, which Dustin presents to El and Max with great ceremony.

“Gee, another way for you guys to invade my life,” Max says, hefting the radio. She sounds pleased.

Eleven switches hers on immediately and shuts her eyes. It crackles into static, which resolves itself into Christmas music with ad copy running over it from the local station downtown.

“Show-off,” Hopper says.

The box that Steve brought turns out to be new film for Jonathan, and Will watches with interest at the uncomfortable, prickly way that Jonathan thanks him. Steve doesn’t quite look at him the whole time. Steve also shoves a hand deep in his coat and fishes out a framed school photo of Barbara Holland — she had been Nancy’s friend, Will remembers. Nancy takes it with both hands, reverently. The room is silent and deeply uncomfortable for a moment.

Then there’s the large bag that Mike had hauled in, which Nancy deposits in front of Eleven. Eleven starts to pull out dresses and shirts wrapped in tissue paper, eyes wide.

“It’s not new,” says Nancy. “It’s just some of my old stuff. But it’s clean. You can throw away whatever you don’t like.”

Will has gotten hand-me-downs before — mostly from Jonathan, and a lot from the thrift store. Unlike him, Eleven looks more excited, not less, at the news that the clothing used to belong to a friend.

Eleven immediately goes to Will’s room to change into her new clothes; and the rest of them move to set up dinner. There are mashed potatoes and baked carrots from El and Hopper; and Will’s mom made a roast that she was really careful to not overdo this time. There’s not nearly enough room for everyone at the kitchen table. They set up the food there, and put out paper plates, and fill up the living room instead. All of the chairs in the house have been dragged in for the occasion. Will still ends up sitting on the floor with Max, showing her how to use her radio. Above them, their friends are trying to explain Christmas TV specials to Eleven.

“The moral of the story is that hoarding all your money is bad, and sharing is good,” says Lucas.

“Yeah, but with ghosts,” Dustin adds.

“Ghosts?” Eleven raises her eyebrows.

“Not real ghosts — it’s fiction, it didn’t actually happen.”

“I think she knows the difference between fiction and reality, Mike,” says Nancy.

“ _What_ is a ghost?” Eleven asks impatiently, a debate which Will can’t not participate in.

Towards the end of dinner, Hopper disappears into the kitchen, long enough that Will’s mom starts to look worried. Before she actually gets up, he returns — with a plate covered in tiny plastic cups of champagne. He passes them out; and slowly, the individual conversations fade away. Hopper stands next to the Christmas tree and raises his cup. “Since we’re all here together … a reminder, that none of us would be alive today if it wasn’t for Bob Newby.” Will’s heart sinks. He sneaks a glance at his mom. She’s sitting on the couch across the room, arm around Jonathan’s shoulders. As Hopper speaks, her face starts to crumple. “He was a damn good man.”

Next to Jonathan, Nancy stands up. “No matter what the official report says, Mr. Newby wasn’t killed by a chemical spill, or because he was trespassing. He was killed by a demogorgon. He kept his family safe, and mine. I’ll remember that.” She stares straight ahead at the wall over Will’s head.

Will shivers. He remembers Bob, with his weird jokes and earnest attempts to get Jonathan to like him. He also remembers waking up in the hospital surrounded by strangers, and a soft-voiced man who insisted that Will knew him. Will couldn’t — still can’t — sort out what part of the fear was his, and what was the Mind-Flayer making him afraid. And Bob had helped him even then, from what Mike and Jonathan have told him. He didn’t ask questions when they needed to find Hopper, and he fought for Will even when he didn’t know what was going on.

Max elbows him. “You okay?” she whispers. “You’re all…” She doesn’t elaborate, but waves a hand around in front of her own face.

Will shakes his head, but he stands up anyway. Everyone turns to look at him, upping his pulse even though it’s all people he knows and trusts. “Bob Newby, superhero,” he says. And somewhat to his amazement, ten voices — friends and adults and siblings and family — repeat back, “Bob Newby, superhero.”

His mom downs her champagne in a quick gulp and hides her face while the rest of them are still toasting. Will looks around to make sure his friends are all drinking theirs before he follows suit. The alcohol is bitter in the back of his throat, and the bubbles leaves a tacky feeling in his mouth. He’s not sure he likes it; but then again, that’s not the point. The point is that they don’t forget. The point is that they all drink together.

~~*~~*~~

On a Wednesday in February, Will falls into step alongside Max in the hallway after English class. She is scowling, as usual, but she doesn’t pretend not to see him, so Will figures she’s okay with being interrupted. “Me and Dustin are going to work on our book reports tomorrow before D&D,” he says. “You want to work with us?”

Max considers it while they shove their way through the mass of people on their way to the exit (or, more accurately: Max shoves her way through, and Will follows her closely enough that the sea of their classmates doesn’t have time to close around her. They walk abreast down the front steps. “I can’t tomorrow,” she says. “I’m going to see the new Friday the Thirteenth movie with Lucas.”

“Oh.” Will wonders why he hasn’t heard about it. He’s not much into horror movies these days, but it would’ve been nice to know.

As if she can hear him thinking, Max skips a step ahead and turns around to face him. “We’re doing an actual, you know, date.” She talks like it’s no big deal, but her cheeks are pink.

“Oh,” says Will, realization and relief hitting him. “You’re going to see a horror movie for Valentine’s Day?”

Max grins. “No, we’re going to see a _really bad_ horror movie. It’ll be super romantic.” 

Will makes a noise that he hopes sounds amused and encouraging, even if nothing about the idea appeals to him. But he can’t think of anything to say, and the conversation dies, just like that.

“Well … I’ll see you tomorrow,” Max says, when they reach the doors. 

“See you,” says Will.

~~*~~*~~

After school on Valentine’s Day, Will bids farewell to Lucas and Max. Mike is already nowhere to be found, which stings a little. Will’s mom comes to pick up him and Dustin. They wedge Dustin’s bicycle into the trunk of the car, and head on over to his place.

First things first, before they can do any actual work: food. Dustin’s mom has made sugar cookies and hot dogs, because she is and has always been the best when it comes to after-school snacks. The kitten does slow laps around the table while they eat, waiting for them to drop scraps. Dustin refuses to let any food fall to her; and Will wants to comment on it, ask if he’s afraid that the next stray he feeds will molt and turn into a tiger. 

He doesn’t comment.

The doorbell rings after the snacks have been consumed, while Will is midway through his pitch for the fantasy novel they’re going to coauthor. “Hold that thought,” says Dustin.

Will is a little miffed because he’s going to lose his momentum, and then the plot won’t sound as good. He goes over the last few points in his head so he won’t forget them while Dustin answers the door. Because he’s rehearsing, he doesn’t immediately pay attention to what Dustin is saying out in the front hall. Then he hears two set of footsteps, and another familiar voice.

“…Didn’t hear anything, so I went to Lucas’ house, and Erica said they were at the movies. His mom let me call Will’s house, and — hi, Will,” says Mike, trailing Dustin back into the kitchen.

His arrival is nothing special, and there’s nothing unusual about the way that Mike greets him … so Will has no idea why his brain suddenly decides to fail him now. He stares at Mike and can’t think of a single thing to say, he had it so firmly in his head that it was just going to be him and Dustin today.

“Where’s Jane?” he asks. It comes out a little too loud, a little too suspicious.

“At her aunt’s house, I think.” Mike looks startled, and a little guilty.

Dustin loops around him and throws himself back into his chair. “Come on, Mike. It’s Valentine’s Day. At least tell me you gave El a card, or a candy bar, or something.”

Mike sits down at the table much more slowly. “No.” He scowls, face down, as if to himself.

“Okay...” says Dustin.

Will passes Mike a cookie from the plate between himself and Dustin. Dustin raises his eyebrows at his plate.

Will traces and retraces the words in his notebook. The words _'defeat their own shadow selves'_ slowly become darker and heavier than the rest of the page.

“So …” Dustin drums his fingers on the table. “Will. That thought I asked you to hold.”

“Uh …” Will has no idea what he was going to say anymore. Mike is here with them instead of Eleven, and he seems off about it. Part of Will is still happy-excited, and he wants to stomp on that part until it shuts up. He blinks a couple of times at his notebook until the pages are full of words again instead of fuzzy graphite smudges. “Oh yeah! I was going to get to the portal next.”

“There’s a portal?” asks Dustin.

“I’m not dating El,” Mike interrupts.

Dustin visibly switches his attention from Will to Mike. “You’re not?” he asks, as Will opens his mouth to say the same.

Mike flips through his school copy of _A Separate Peace_ , and doesn’t look at either of them. “No. We’re just friends.”

Will’s insides are doing a funny thing, rising with hope and simultaneously sinking on behalf of his best friend. It’s a stupid hope, anyway, and he pushes it aside. “You like her, right?”

“Yeah!” Mike sounds almost indignant. “I do, a lot. That doesn’t mean I want to be her boyfriend.”

“Why not?” Dustin asks.

“Dating is like, going to the movies, and flowers and carrying books in school. Can you see El doing any of that?”

“She would probably give you a death look if you tried to carry anything for her,” Dustin muses, tapping his chin.

“El likes movies,” Will says — not because he wants Mike to ask El to be his girlfriend, because he feels like they’re not being quite fair to her. They don’t know what she would want, if she didn’t have to spend the rest of the school year hiding in Hopper’s cabin. She likes makeup, and dressing up. Maybe she does want to date.

“Yes, she likes movies!” Mike glares at them. “Will you guys stop it? We’re not dating because it would make things different. And it was El’s idea, not mine.”

Dustin relaxes, sinking back down into his seat. He shakes his head. “You’re just as crazy as she is,” he mutters, but he says it with amusement. 

Will turns it over in his mind, the possibility of liking someone who likes you back and then just not wanting to do much about it besides holding hands when they think no one’s looking; and then he realizes that it’s already a familiar idea to him. It is the only thing he has dared to want. Mike is a boy and Eleven is a girl, so it’s not exactly the same, but she’s not a normal kind of girl in a lot of ways. “No, I get it,” he says to Mike, who rewards him with a look of undisguised relief. “Sorry.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not crazy,” Dustin says.

“Sure, but we knew that already,” says Will. He kicks Mike under the table, and smiles, and takes another cookie.

~~*~~*~~

Will watches the two of them at their next D&D session. El still prefers to add onto Steve’s ideas for their character, instead of making up her own moves from scratch. She still watches Mike DM with a laser focus unlike anything Will has seen before. Mike still looks at her like she hung the moon, even when she’s rolling her eyes at Dustin or imitating Steve’s cool-teenager slouch, brow furrowed and cheeks puffed out.

They are the same as they have ever been to each other, dating or not.

Lucas catches him watching Mike watching Eleven, and raises an eyebrow. Will flattens his mouth. He doesn’t spend as much time looking for the rest of the session.

“Are you just trying to make yourself feel bad?” Lucas asks him quietly, on their way out of the house.

Will blinks at him. “Huh?”

“With the, the sad staring and all that. _Ooh, look how much they love each other. I’m gonna sit here and remind myself how much Mike likes girls._ That’s you.”

“Shhhh! It’s not that. I just want to make sure that El and Mike are happy. Even happy together.”

Lucas does a complicated waggle of his eyebrows. “All right, whatever you want to tell yourself.”

Will groans. “I’m not lying. They’re both my friends.”

Lucas looks like he’s going to say something else, but then Max inserts herself between them and drapes an arm over each of their shoulders. “Important nerd question. What’s the rule about taking extra actions in combat? I thought the last thing that Steve and Eleven did was against the rules but no one said anything, so …” 

Lucas shoots one last meaningful look at Will before he lets the conversation move on.

~~*~~*~~

He and Mike make the journey out to El’s cabin alone sometimes, just the two of them talking and planning. Will isn’t any less of himself when the whole party is together; but he feels a little more than himself on those bike rides, with only Mike watching. Then, finally, he can tell Mike about the Upside-Down. He points out the places he hid, and what they looked like. He tells Mike about how his mom put up Christmas lights in the living room for the holiday, and it took all of three days for him and his family to figure out why he was so nervous inside the house. Mike, in turn, tells him about the nightmares he has sometimes, of jumping off a cliff, of Eleven vanishing in front of him, of finding Will dead and bloated in the river.

Sometimes they’re the only guests at the cabin. Once, when they knock, Max opens the door -- wearing the same dark makeup and hair oil as El. She glares at them defensively.

“Nice,” says Will.

“I look like a banshee. It’s okay, you can say it,” says Max with a rueful smile.

Eleven bounces over to them as soon as they’re safely inside. She has an eyeliner pencil in one hand and a lot of dark smudges around her eyes. “Mike! Will! Come.” She grabs Mike’s hand and drags him over to the bathroom mirror.

It takes a long time to wash off enough of the makeup to go home that evening.

~~*~~*~~

“Is Mom going to date Hopper?” Will asks Jonathan. He’s been worrying about it on and off since Christmas, and right now, it’s an on-worry. There’s a box of Hopper’s brand of cigarettes on the kitchen table, and Eggos in the freezer, and Hopper himself is sitting on the couch with their mom and Eleven, watching _The Fox and the Hound_. His arm is over the back of the couch, and Eleven is curled up with her feet under his legs and her head on their mom’s shoulder. They look like an ordinary family, and Will feels shut out of it.

Jonathan spins around in his chair. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, but what do you think?” Will persists. He has an awful twisting feeling in his stomach: a new kind of nerves that he wants no part of.

“I don’t know! If I did, I’d tell you. I don’t even know if Mom is ready to move on yet, after Bob,” Jonathan says. “She really liked him.”

“She can really like more than one person,” says Will.

Jonathan frowns, rests his elbows on his knees. “Do you want her to date him?”

“I don’t know.” Will leans out of Jonathan’s doorway to look into the living room. El is glaring at the screen.

“Copper, _no_ ,” she says fiercely, as if she can change the movie by force of will. (If anyone could do it, it would be her.) Will’s mom puts a hand on her shoulder, soothing, and exchanges a look with Hopper over Eleven’s head.

Will ducks back into the bedroom. He shrugs.

Jonathan sighs and gives him a small smile. “Look, if you want to watch The Fox and the Hound, go watch The Fox and the Hound. Mom’s not gonna start a new family without us.”

“It’s not that,” says Will; but he pads across the carpeted floor and squeezes himself between his mom and the arm of the couch. “You like the movie?” he asks Eleven.

“Shh,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen. Will’s mom chuckles and puts an arm around Will, pulling him and Eleven closer to her.

~~*~~*~~

The winter blurs together in a series of smaller, routine events: Dungeons and Dragons, and AV Club, and visiting Eleven, and Eleven and Hopper coming over for dinner, and nightmares, and homework, and writing. He and Dustin have settled on a plot outline and characters, and have started passing a notebook back and forth throughout the day so they can take turns writing. They tell Eleven about it at length; she tilts her head and asks a lot of questions, but Will thinks she’s still having trouble with the concept of writing stories for fun. She draws their main character for them a couple of times, so Will knows she cares.

He also spends some time just with Mike and Max. All three of them have older siblings who will be moving out soon, although their feelings are all significantly different.

“Billy couldn’t get into college if his life depended on it,” Max declares. “Doesn’t mean he’s going to stick around. Might even leave in May, when he turns eighteen.” She smiles smugly to herself.

“Where’s he gonna go?” Mike asks.

Max shrugs. “Who the hell knows? Back to California, probably.”

“And your stepdad?” Will bites his lip.

“Probably gonna flip his lid. Hey, I might have a slumber party at your house when he does, if your mom’s cool with that. We can invite Eleven!” Max gives him a cheerful grin. Will knows her well enough by now to see that she’s uncomfortable, and lets it go.

“As long as she doesn’t want to do my hair again,” Will says, half-serious.

“You looked … kind of cool,” Mike offers.

Max snorts.

~~*~~*~~

Will, Jonathan, and Eleven get home from the Wheelers' house one week, and the Chief’s car is in the driveway already. The flickering light of the television cuts through the curtains. Jonathan stomps unnecessarily in front of the door, and spends a lot of time fumbling with the lock. Coming inside, the first thing Will sees is Hopper’s boots by the door. A second later, he inhales pizza and his mom’s cigarettes. He lifts his eyes to the couch where his mom and Hopper are sitting, side by side, faces turned towards the door.

“Hey,” says his mom. “You have fun?”

“Yes.” El comes in without any hesitation and sits down on the arm of the couch next to Will’s mom. “Me and Steve killed a bad guy.”

“Oh, really?” Hopper leans forward. “In the game, right?”

Once they've established that yes, they are just talking about the game, Will’s mom turns off the television and escorts Hopper and Eleven to the door. She hugs them goodbye — long, fierce embraces for both. Hopper hides his face in her hair for a moment; Will glances at Jonathan, who looks as unsettled as Will feels.

After they leave, Jonathan goes to his room, and their mom collects the pizza plates from the coffee table. Will hovers in the living room for a moment, undecided, before he follows his mom into the kitchen. He sits down at the table and watches his mom put dishes into the sink. “Mom …” he says.

As he expects, his mom immediately turns around and switches her attention from the dishes to him. “What’s up, sweetheart?”

Will fiddles with the rough edge of the vinyl tablecloth. “Are you and Hopper … Is he your boyfriend?”

His mom’s eyes widen for a split second. She laughs nervously. “No … no, Hopper is not my boyfriend. He’s just an old friend who came over for some adult conversation while our kids were out together.”

Will thinks of his conversation with Mike, about El and feelings and friendship. “Do you like him?” he asks.

His mom sighs. She pulls out a chair next to him and tucks her hair behind her ears. “Things are … complicated,” she says.

“What kind of complicated?” Will asks. He itches for something to do with his hands.

“Well…” His mom presses her lips together. “Sometimes, liking someone isn’t enough. Sometimes being friends, and things staying the same, is more important.”

Will’s stomach sinks, like he swallowed a rock. “Why?”

“I like being friends with Hop — with Hopper. He’s a good friend. I’m not sure he’d be a good boyfriend. Not like Bob.”

Will is silent. Mike and Eleven, and now his mom and Hopper. It is both comforting and strangely alien, to know that his friends and family aren’t normal either . At least there’s Lucas and Max, being a normal boyfriend and girlfriend … but he thinks back to what Lucas said, about knowing what it was like to be bad-different.

“Will?” his mom asks. “Is it ... okay that Hopper is around so much?”

Will looks down at the table. “I want you to be happy. I want us to be happy.”

His mom reaches out, puts her hands over his on the table. “I promise you, I am as happy as I can be. I have you and Jonathan, and I have Jane and Hopper. My kids and my best friend, all healthy and together. What else could I want?”

Will nods. He stands up, tugging on his mom’s hands to make her stand with him so that he can hug her tight around the waist. “Okay, he says, “okay.”

~~*~~*~~

When it’s warm enough for the snow to melt, Will and Mike renovate Castle Byers with Jonathan. Eleven tags along once, increasingly incredulous the more they try to explain the appeal of having a place in the woods to hang out. “I like my house,” she says. “It’s warm. There are lights at night.”

“It’s not a place to live,” Mike explains. “It’s a place to hide. For fun.”

“Fun,” she repeats, and, “No.”

Even though Eleven doesn’t want to be part of their renovations, Will still ends up spending a lot of time with her and Mike. They listen to music, and they teach Eleven how to act in school, and they play board games. It’s just … nice. His heart hurts a little when Mike looks softly at El, and then the tail end of that gaze catches Will before he can switch expressions. But he also gets to talk about things without upsetting their other friends. He can talk about the nightmares where the world ends, and all his friends are wrapped in vines, dead and blue and devoured on the ground. He can talk about how ordinary things can make him freeze up, and how he feels a weird kinship with Nancy’s friend, Barb. “She could have been me,” he says, “if I was a little slower.”

“You weren’t,” says Eleven, staring into his eyes.

“You’re too smart for that,” says Mike.

~~*~~*~~

In April, Jonathan’s college letters start coming. Will draws him up a chart so he can list the pros and cons of each school’s film program and their financial aid packages. Jonathan fills it out dutifully and then spends almost a week in an angry, bitter funk that Will can’t seem to shake him out of. Will gives his friends an abbreviated version of events during AV Club.

“Nancy got into NYU,” says Mike. He throws it out there casually, but anyone can see that he’s proud of his sister.

“Is she going?” Will asks.

“I think so. She,” —

“Shut up a moment, I need to concentrate,” says Max. She and Dustin are kneeling in front of a broken reel-to-reel setup that Mr. Clarke procured for them a month ago, putting a few remaining screws back in place. Mike and Will and Lucas all wait in silence. “Okay, go,” she says.

“Thank you, your majesty,” says Lucas. Max rolls her eyes.

~~*~~*~~

Later, in the privacy of his own room, Will confesses, “I’m kind of scared what’s gonna happen to Mom when Jonathan leaves.”

“I’ll still be with you. We’ll help her out, until she gets used to it,” Mike says.

Will smiles. He wants badly to hold Mike’s hand -- not because he likes him, because they’re friends and he wants the support. He twists his fingers together in his lap. “Thanks.”

Mike takes his hand anyway. Will’s dumb heart flutters. “I mean it. We’ll all help, if we need to. And you’ll have Hopper, too. He likes your mom; he won’t let anything bad happen to her.”

~~*~~*~~

Jonathan and Nancy are still upstairs when the party finishes their game for the night, a few weeks later. Will is running up the stairs after everyone when Steve puts out a hand to hold him back.

“Hey, Will. Listen.” Steve is two steps below him, so they’re at eye level for once.

“Is it about the healing spell? I know it’s not how that normally works, but you and El,” —

“No, no. Not the spell. Listen. I know Jon’s going to New York in the fall, but I’m not. I’m staying local.” Steve is looking at him intensely, like he’s waiting for Will to catch on.

Will is not catching on. “Yeah, he told me. You’re gonna apprentice with Mr. Barnaby.”

“If he says yes, but that’s not the point.” Steve waves a hand. “The point is, I’ll be around when — if you need to — phone calls to the east coast are expensive, and I’ll be making money. I hope. And …” He swallows and looks up at the ceiling. “If you need a ride, or your mom needs something fixed around the house, you’ve got my number. You let me know, okay?”

Will stares at him. His throat feels weirdly tight. “Thanks, Steve.”

Steve claps him on the shoulder. “Yeah, well. Don’t mention it.” He starts to head up the stairs past Will, stops after a step, and turns around. “Seriously, don’t mention it to Jonathan.”

Will shakes his head as he goes up the stairs. It sinks in, then, that Steve Harrington just offered to stick with his family even when Jonathan is away at school — regardless of whether Jonathan knows or not. 

“What was that about?” Mike whispers to him at the front door.

“You told Steve to watch out for us?” Will asks, because once Mike asks, he remembers their conversation, and the timing — it can’t be a coincidence.

Mike frowns at him. “What? No.”

“Friends don’t lie?”

“Friends don’t lie,” Mike confirms.

Will hums. He watches Steve putting on his jacket and shoes in the front hallway. “Huh,” he says, and tries to hide the confused grin working its way across his face.

~~*~~*~~

The blanket fort that Mike built for Eleven last November finally got taken down by Mike’s parents around Christmas this year, when they started wondering where all the flannel sheets went. Now that the weather is warmer, the sheets are back in the basement. Will, Mike, and Eleven have spent most of the afternoon rebuilding and expanding it to incorporate the couch, a broom, a rake, and a collapsible laundry rack that Mike found lurking under the basement stairs.

Will crawls underneath to see if there’s enough head space in the center of the fort. It’s pleasantly dim and stuffy inside. The light that comes through is filtered by the orange flannel of the roof blanket.

“It’s up to code,” he announces, sitting up on his heels.

Eleven sticks her head under the entrance flap. “You want the radio now?” she asks.

Will nods enthusiastically. She disappears; then the whole front lifts up, and she comes through on her hands and knees, pushing the Wheelers’ boom box across the carpet in front of her with her mind. That sort of thing doesn’t hurt her like it used to. Will starts connecting wires and plugging it in while she and Mike climb in and arrange themselves.

“Nice,” says El.

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. “Oh, careful. Don’t lean against the drying rack, or the whole thing comes down. Here, let’s trade places. You can have the couch.”

They shuffle around behind Will. He turns on the cassette player, and takes out the Madonna tape that either belongs to Nancy or Mrs. Wheeler. Neither he nor Mike have a lot of cassettes, but Jonathan is letting him borrow some of his because it’s to teach El about Real Music. Will has decided they can start with the Clash, and go from there.

A few songs into the cassette, Eleven’s face lights up with recognition. “Your song,” she says to Will. “I found you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, my brother made me this, uh, mix — he put together a bunch of different songs he wanted me to hear. When I was in the Upside Down … I sang that whole mix, to remind me of home. This one was my favorite.” He ducks his head, unwilling to look them in the eye even though he wants to tell them. “It made me feel brave.” It’s a little silly — that’s not even what the song is about — but there it is. 

Mike nods. Eleven bounces her head along to the song, humming off-key to the chorus.

“Do you remember anything, from when we were asking you how to defeat the Mind Flayer?” Mike asks.

Will shudders. He’d been so cold, and at the same time he hadn’t been able to feel anything at all. It was like sitting in the back of a movie theater, watching the screen through a pair of out-of-focus binoculars. But there had been voices, and that song, pulling him closer with their familiarity until the movie screen had been clear enough to touch.

“I remember,” he says softly. “You and my mom and Jonathan were there. He played his mix.” It had hurt. The only thing that made it bearable was the hope that if he just held on until he’d told them what he knew, then he could stop struggling for a little while. He could let the ropes and the bright lights do their job and keep his body under control for him. Mike says something, but for a moment Will is stuck in the back of his head with an alien virus wresting control of his entire self away from him. His ears ring.

“Will.” Something ghosts across the back of his hand, and Will flinches. Eleven freezes, then puts her hand back down on top of his. “It’s okay now,” she tells him. “We are here.” She turns his hand over and laces their fingers together. 

Will clings to El like she’s a lifeline, grounding him here in reality. The opening beat of “Rock the Casbah” starts up behind him. It wasn’t on the mix. He doesn’t even like the song that much. He doesn’t move to skip it.

Mike shakes him lightly, one hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to know — I wasn’t thinking. You okay?”

Will gives as much of a smile as he can muster.

Mike holds up a finger, a _hold on_ gesture. He reaches behind him for his backpack, just outside of the fort. He drags it onto his lap and goes diving into the mess of crumpled paper, plastic bags, pencils, and candy wrappers. Eleven grips his hand tight.

The song fades away while they wait, and leaves them with exactly three seconds of ringing silence. Mike emerges from his backpack rummage holding … another cassette. His face is bright pink. It might just be the color of the blanket.

“Here. Can we do this one instead?” he asks.

“What is it?” Will asks. Mike gives him a crooked smile.

Eleven pulls away from Will so she can turn around and hit pause. She holds out her hand to Mike. As he passes her the cassette, Will catches a glimpse of the label — and his pulse jumps. _For Will,_ it reads.

El switches it out with only a little difficulty. Will looks between her and Mike. “What?”

“I asked Jonathan to help me make it for you,” Mike says. “Since he has the right equipment.”

Will blinks. “When?” He goes over potential times Mike would’ve been at his house without him realizing it, and comes up empty-handed.

“Mostly when I said I was going up to Hopper’s cabin, and you were at Dustin or Lucas’s. And one time when you were all at AV Club and I said I had to go babysit Holly.”

“Did you know?” Will asks El.

“Friends can lie if it’s for a present,” Eleven says, with the most self-satisfied expression Will has ever seen her wear. He struggles not to laugh at her.

“Okay. But — why? What’s it for?” Because Will knows what he wants it to be, but just because it looks like it — there are so many other, more plausible explanations, especially if El was involved …

Mike shuffles on his knees so they’re sitting face to face. “I made it because I like you, and I want you to be happy, and music makes you happy, right?”

Will wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans. He is way too aware of El sitting right there, watching, and of the white noise hum of empty speakers in the fort. “Thanks. I…” He makes the mistake of meeting Mike’s gaze just as Mike bites his lip, and then he’s thinking about how it would be nice to just lean in and — and … but that’s _not_ what’s happening, that’s just the weird and uncomfortable part of him pretending things are different. “Thank you,” he repeats.

“Mike?” says El.

Mike groans, and grabs his hair, and then grabs both of Will’s hands with his own. “I made you the mix because I _really_ like you,” he says. His hands are clammy. Will’s heart beats so fast that he gets dizzy for — a few seconds, an instant, he can’t tell. Mike continues. “I like you the way I like El, the way I’m supposed to like girls. And, I felt guilty about it, so I told her, and …”

Will stares at El. She sits cross-legged with her back against the couch, watching him hold hands with Mike (he’s holding hands with Mike! Who said he _likes_ him!). He’s gotten pretty good at reading the variation in her strange blank expressions, but right now he must be wrong. She doesn’t look angry, or confused. She looks serene, knowing. She looks like a friend, and she looks like an alien.

“When — what?” Will asks.

“Valentine’s Day,” says El.

“Yeah, but …” Will clings to Mike’s hands and gawks at him and Eleven. “You’re still …”

“Friends who hold hands.” Eleven nods.

“Is that — is that okay?” Mike asks. “I don’t — what am I saying, I haven’t even — do you — when I was talking to Jonathan, he made it sound like — _agh_.” He ducks his head, face red.

Will, on the other hand, starts to breathe a little easier. It helps to see Mike just as confused as him, just as afraid of rejection. He takes a deep breath. He adjusts his grip on Mike’s hands. “Hey. Mike. When we were at the Snow Ball, and Katie Hooper came up and asked me to dance.”

“I was so happy that someone saw you.” Mike smiles down at his knees.

“And I just wanted to dance with you,” Will confesses. “I didn’t want there to be anyone else around. But …” Here he looks at Eleven, whose bright eyes haven’t left his face once in the last twenty seconds. “I think, if it’s just you and me and Eleven, it’s okay. We’re different.” He lets go of one of Mike’s hands (and Mike doesn’t want to let go for a moment, and Will’s heart goddamn _soars_ ) and reaches out for Eleven. She slides her fingers through his, pressing their palms together. She touches Mike with her other hand, so that they form a triangle, the three of them holding onto each other.

“Are you sure?” Mike asks, lifting his head. “You’re not — grossed out, or — or mad?”

“Lucas figured out that I had a crush on you, and he said, well, at least it’s not as bad as the Mind-Flayer taking me over.” He can laugh about the wording, even if the Mind Flayer is still too fresh in his memory to sit comfortably. “That’s how I see it, too.” Will shrugs. “We’re weird, but we can all be weird together.”

“Yeah.” Mike nods. “Yeah, I like that.”

“Weird friends who kiss.” Eleven smiles, chin down, eyes flickering between Will and Mike.

Will lets that sit between them: the latest in a string of strange turns that his life has taken. A year and a half ago, he and his friends were starting their second major Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and the biggest problem he had was still his dad. And then the Upside-Down happened, and Eleven happened. He has told lies that killed people, and lied to keep himself safe, and he has hidden himself and hidden himself and now here he is. He has a sister-in-arms who loves him and a best friend who knows he’s a queer and wants to hold his hand in spite of what he is — because of what he is.

A tremor of joy spreads through his body from his lungs outwards. He frees his hands and leans forwards to hug his friends. Eleven’s arm drapes over his shoulder; Mike’s hand grips his shirt at the waist. He hesitates, unsure where to touch so it doesn’t come across as too feminine, too gay, and then realizes that it doesn’t matter now. He shoves his head under Mike’s chin, feels Eleven’s hair against his ear, and grins. Mike’s chest expands. He breathes out against Will’s hair. They sway for a moment before they figure out how to balance against each other.

“Happy?” Eleven asks.

Will nods. “All the way happy.”

He sits back. Mike has this soft smile on his face that makes it hard for Will to look at him properly; and Eleven glows with so much happiness that Will can understand why Mike thinks she’s so pretty.

“So … you made me a mix tape,” Will says. “Let’s listen to that.”

“It’s not, um, love songs or anything. Just new stuff I thought you’d like,” Mike explains, flushing.

Will giggles at the image of Mike trying to get Jonathan to help him make a mix of love songs without tripping over his own tongue with embarrassment. “That sounds great. Really great,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> Now with [DVD commentary](https://strixalba.dreamwidth.org/7664.html)!


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